Windows: Auslogics BenchTown is a simple and free benchmarking tool that tests your system's hardware and gives you a rating score that you can compare with others.

BenchTown checks your CPU, RAM, HDD, and graphics card (2D and 3D capabilities), and provides scores for each. You can also get a detailed view of these system properties in the program. The benchmark test took less than 5 minutes for me and was easy to use in the simple interface (much like Auslogics' fast Disk Defrag, one of Lifehacker readers' favorite Windows maintenance tools).

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In the end, although you get a nice bar graph showing which components your computer tested well for, the "Ausmarks" score really has no meaning without context, so you'll want to hit the "Compare with Friends" button to see how your system stacks up against other BenchTown users. The community at BenchTown.com is still growing (there are under 500 users right now), but you can compare your system against other users there (mine, being a laptop, albeit a newish one, was on the low side of average).

BenchTown isn't as robust as other benchmarking tools we've mentioned in the past, like PC Wizard, but it does give you a different performance metric than Windows' built-in Experience Index, which also gives your computer a performance rating. The community/comparison aspect may make BenchTown very helpful in determining when you need to upgrade your hardware.